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Plurilingual Education in Canadian schools: 

Who, What, When, Why and How?

On Thursday, March 7, from 5-7pm, Prof. Marie-Paule Lory and her students from FRE354H5 (Teaching French in a Plurilingual Context) hosted a hands-on workshop by Dr. Gail Prasad that reflected on plurilingual education in the Canadian context.

Prof. Gail Prasad is an Associate professor in the Faculty of Education at York University, Canada. Her research focuses on critical multilingual language awareness and critical and creative approaches to multilingual and plurilingual education and teacher development. She has partnered in research with teachers, students and their families in Canada, the US, France, Kenya and Burkina Faso. Her scholarship has been published in English and French in journals including TESOL Quarterly, the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, the Canadian Modern Language Review and Glottopol.

In this workshop, we will explore the role of plurilingualism in teaching and learning in Canadian classrooms. Drawing on classroom-based research conducted across English and French-language schools in Canada, we will examine examples of students’ plurilingual work generated when teachers adopt a plurilingual approach in the classroom. Working in small groups, we’ll engage in a plurilingual “créathon” to practice plurilingual strategies that can be transferred into daily classroom activities and routines. The workshop concludes with a sharing of participants' creations and responding to the five titular questions: Who, What, When, Why and How do we leverage the rich plurilingualism in Canadian classrooms today? 

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Prof. Prasad delivering her workshop.  (Photos: M-P Lory)